Case Number 23699: Small Claims Court

KILL

The Charge

Six People. One Dream Vacation. One Twisted Game. One Rule.

The Case

Six strangers wake to find themselves in a building they have never seen
before. After making their brief introductions to each other, they attempt to
find a way out, but the group soon realizes they are under surveillance from
their captor, and that the only way to escape is to kill.

There are three types of bad movie. Firstly, there are those that fall into
the "so bad it's good" category; an example of this would be the Mick
Jagger/Emilio Estevez clunker Freejack or the much celebrated Troll
2. Next up are the movies that are truly an affront to mankind, and all that
is holy; examples of this are much rarer, but House of Sin would be an
obvious candidate. Finally, there are the movies that are bad, but in a
half-assed kind of way, lacking either the unintended charms to earn it guilty
pleasure status or the balls to be all-out awful. Kill falls firmly into
the latter group.

Very little actually happens during the course of Kill's 90-minute
runtime, with most of the action taking place during the final act, by which
point most viewers will have turned it off. The initial setup, which sees six
strangers awaken to find themselves the subject of a madman's game, is
reminiscent of Saw 2, but lacks a charismatic villain to carry the film.
As is discussed in the directors' commentary, the characters in Kill are
hardly unique, and each serves only to fill a very specific (and clichéd)
role, such as the whiny girl or aggressive jock. Given little to do, besides
repeatedly ask each other what is going on -- dialogue which is usually strewn
with unnecessary expletives -- these characters offer absolutely nothing to make
us empathize with them. Such is the disconnect between the audience and the
events onscreen that I, for one, couldn't care less whether these people lived
or died.

Even if you approach Kill hoping for a little gore, you'll be left
wanting. What splatter there is rarely extends beyond a few ketchup stains on a
T-shirt.

The acting is, without exception, awful. I genuinely take no pleasure in
saying that, and readily admit I could do no better myself, but come on -- I've
seen coffee tables that were less wooden. Admittedly, the appalling dialogue
does the cast few favors, and at least their contribution is no worse than that
of writer-director duo Chad Archibald and Philip Carrer, who fail to offer a
single redeeming feature for their movie.

Considering the overall lack of quality, credit should be given to Sonica
Disturbia, for delivering a rather impressive score, which -- far more than the
acting or directing -- goes someway to creating a suitably menacing tone.

The DVD transfer is pretty solid. The picture is reasonably sharp, with a
light amount of grain throughout. Colors are suitably muted, with good black
levels. The stereo soundtrack sports clear dialogue.

An audio commentary featuring both directors headlines the special features.
Unfortunately, the track is prone to long silences, while at other times, the
two directors talk over each other. A trailer for the film is also included,
along with a couple of "Tromatic Extras." The first of these extras is
"Radiation March," which will be familiar to anyone who has purchased
a Troma DVD before. The second, and more entertaining extra, is
"Transvestite PSA," which features Lemmy from Motorhead, along with
Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park fame.

Whichever way you slice it, there's no escaping the fact that Chad Archibald
and Philip Carrer's Kill is poor, and not worth your time or money. For
final clarification on how sloppy this release is, the DVD cover misspells
director Chad Archibald's name.